Note 164 — THOMSON.

“It was at this time that the school of Pope was giving way: addresses to the head rather than to the heart, or the fancy; moral axioms and witty observations, expressed in harmonious numbers, and with epigrammatick terseness; the limae labor, all the artifices of a highly polished style, and the graces of finished composition, which had long usurped the place of the more sterling beauties of the imagination and sentiment, began first to be lessened in the public estimation by the appearance of Thomson’s Seasons, a work which constituted a new era in our poetry.” Censura Literaria, iv. 280.